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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Where are these posts I keep promising?? Well, I’ve been working on them all week, but, unlike Dr. Kissinger, I’m unwilling to place expediency over sound judgment, so I cannot release them until they’re done. I’ll have to launch the series on Sunday. (I promise!) In the meantime, here's a too-small-to-do-you-any-good preview of the massive structure chart I've been making all week...just to prove that I have been slaving away for you...

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Last week,
we looked at specific character arcs associated with seven different
genres.Together, they covered
most movies, but there are additional character arcs within those movies that
we can examine.The point of this
series is that most large self-contained stories are focused on one character’s
problem, and human nature dictates that people tend to go through a similar set
of steps to solve those problems.

Of course,
it’s not just storytelling gurus who try to figure out these steps.Psychologists have been figuring out
the steps of problem solving on their end for centuries.Within each genres, you’ll find heroes
whose individual journeys resemble the journeys described by certain
psychologists.

Let’s start
with the two biggies: Freud and Jung.Freud focused his work on mental
illness and believed that the job of the psychologist was to help the patient
solve problems and get out of therapy.The first precept of Freudian therapists is that, for therapy to be
effective, patients “must want to change.”The Freudian arc is a transformation arc: the hero
realizes that he’s self-destructive and transforms himself.

Freud’s
student Jung decided that his mentor was too focused on mental illness as
opposed to mental health. Jung studied healthier patients and became convinced
that the goal of the psychologist should be to help patients understand and
accept themselves, rather than change.The Jungian arc is an Individuation arc: The hero realizes that he
needs to stop trying to change, and rediscover his inborn wisdom.

I’ve
referred to these two arcs as the Han arc and the Luke arc: Han is a rotten guy
who thinks he’s great, but he comes to realize that he needs to change.He finally succeeds by doing something
he never would have done before.Luke is a good person who thinks he’s a failure.He craves the validation that would
come with leaving farm life for flight school, but when he finally becomes a
pilot, he finds that it was the skills he learned at home, both practically and
spiritually, that allow him to succeed where all the other pilots fail.

Two other
psychologists have described self-help journeys that also show up in movies.Abraham Maslow described the way in
which we tend to satisfy our hierarchy of needs one by one.Characters who have been totally
devastated and/or exiled are sometimes forced to follow this arc, such as Jason
Bourne or the title characters in The Ballad of Cable Hogue or The Brother From
Another Planet:

Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross focused her studies on those experiencing severe grief and found
that they tended to follow the same basic steps.These steps tend to form the arc of movies about grief, in
movies like Swayze in Ghost, Carrell
in Little Miss Sunshine, or Hutton Ordinary
People.Also seen on death-filled
TV shows like “Lost” and “Battlestar: Galactica”:

Monday, May 27, 2013

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Hi
everybody!Well, you might as well
just subscribe to the Narrative Breakdown podcast, because James and Cheryl are
posting every week at this point and they’re all worth listening to.This week, I’m back as their co-host for
a show about sub-text, based in part on this post.Give it a listen!

Thursday, May 23, 2013

In college we joked that Shakespeare was just like life: The comedies all end with marriage and the tragedies all begin with one. I certainly haven’t found that be true in life, and even in fiction (even in Shakespeare, in fact) the rule is overstated.

Nevertheless, this does give us a clue as to the nature of Drama: it tends to pick up where comedy leaves off. Comedy ends with the removal of a mask and the beginnings of humility, but that’s where drama tends to begin. Dramas are, more than anything, about growth. The hero’s flaw and the hero’s problem tend to be one and the same: they know that they’re their own worst problem and they’re determined to fix it.

Tragedies, unlike every other type of movie, frequently have a midpoint high-point, rather than a midpoint disaster. Tragedies usually feature anti-heroes who are somewhat loathsome, but sometimes they feature heroes who are too good to live, like Serpico or Jack in Titanic.

Discontent / Rising / Strained to Breaking Point / Death of Body, Career, or Soul:

Citizen Kane

The Godfather

Downhill Racer

Serpico

Dog Day Afternoon

Donnie Brasco (Surprisingly)

The Talented Mr. Ripley

American Beauty

Titanic

The Black Swan

There Will Be Blood

Finally, commenter Beth asked earlier this week if I would cover the genre of romance, but as far as I can tell, there is no such genre. Every romance, it seems to me, is merely the romantic version of some other genre, usually comedy or tragedy. Am I wrong? Is there a romance arc?

Next week, we’ll have one more post before we start go through the structure list, on different psychological arcs that exist alongside these.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Yesterday, we looked at thriller, mystery/conspiracy, and action movies. The horror movie has much in common with all three, but it’s fundamentally different. In horror, the audience has less identification with the hero than in any other type of story.

In action and conspiracy movies, we identify with the hero the whole time. Even when the heroes are kicking themselves in the third quarter for being overconfident in the second quarter, we fully identify, since we shared their adrenaline rush, and we, too, failed to see the disaster coming.

Thrillers are trickier. We share the thrill of transgression in the second quarter, but we do see the disaster coming, and we withhold some of our sympathy even then. In the third quarter, when the sinning hero suffers consequences, we switch to a judgmental attitude and look down on the same transgressions that we just vicariously enjoyed.

In horror, we always empathize with the heroes, in that we share their fear, but we rarely sympathize, because their suffering is usually somehow their fault. The transgression usually happens much earlier, in the first quarter or before the movie starts, and we take no joy from it. Instead, our joy comes from a mix of sharing the heroes’ fear and sharing the evil force’s desire to punish them. As the advantage keeps shifting between the two sides, we win either way.

Tellingly, even in movies where we don’t see any transgression, we’re so hard-wired to blame the victims that we spend the whole movie trying to figure out what the heroes might have done to deserve this, because they must have done something. You can see the audience dynamic in such movies as…

The Birds (Critics have twisted themselves into knots trying to figure out why the opening scenes justify the attack. I think Hitch’s true point is that people will always blame themselves for nature’s fury, even when they shouldn’t.)

Night of the Living Dead (“What did humanity do to deserve this?” is the implied question, which is ironically answered by the final scene)

The Exorcist (The priests keep asking why the devil would choose this girl)

Saw (Victims try to figure out what they did wrong)

28 Days Later (Again, “What did we do to deserve this?” is asked many times)

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

These three genres can seem almost interchangeable, and they tended to share the same shelf space at video stores, back when those existed, but their underlying structures are surprisingly different.

The first surprise is that thrillers have almost the same underlying structure as comedies. As with Comedy, classical thrillers tend to focus on a hero who creates his own problem by transgressing society’s norms, creating this very similar quartet: Discontent / Transgression / Consequences / Victory or Defeat

Double Indemnity

Rear Window

Strangers on a Train (punished for a transgression he only considered)

Bonnie and Clyde (surprisingly)

Body Heat

Blood Simple

Blue Velvet

Fatal Attraction

Silence of the Lambs (Sort of: transgression = sharing with Lecter / consequences = Lecter’s escape. Actually, this movie proves to be surprisingly slippery, and could be squeezed into any of these three categories)

But that definition leaves out movies that are driven by conspiracies, so we have to give them their own category. These movies feature little or no transgression by the hero, and focus on exterior antagonism. The arc is: Injustice / Overconfident Investigative Crusade / Betrayals / Revelation

Maltese Falcon

Manchurian Candidate

Chinatown

All the President’s Men

L. A. Confidential

Crimson Tide (surprisingly, since it feels more like thriller or action)

What about action movies? Surprisingly, they’re closer to Mystery/Conspiracy movies than they are to thrillers, since both are focused on external problems rather than personal flaws. The arc is: Injustice / Kicking Ass Overconfidently / Getting Ass Kicked / Victory or Defeat

Goldfinger

The Great Escape

The French Connection

Star Wars

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Die Hard

Speed

Batman Begins

Once again, many movies end up in very different categories than I thought they would:

Thor feels like straight-up action and not at all like a thriller, but it’s structured like the latter than the former: It’s focused not on the external threat but on the hero’s folly and culpability in all that follows. The movie is more critical of Thor than Loki.

Donnie Brasco feels like a thriller, but doesn’t fit into any of these categories. Instead, it charts like a tragedy, which is a structure we’ll look at later in this series.

The final surprise: Certain movies (each of which were adapted from several years worth of stories in another medium), combined more than one of these arcs, but in each case, they didn’t overlap—One arc wraps up and then the other begins immediately thereafter:

The Fugitive (compressed from a four-year TV epic) crams an entire action arc into its first 40 minutes, then fits a mystery arc into the remaining 80 minutes.

Spider-Man (covering the first ten years of the comic) zips through a thriller arc, in which the power goes to Peter’s head and he suffers the consequences, then it wraps that up and devotes the rest of the movie to an action arc, as he deals with the external threat of the Green Goblin

Iron Man (covering 20 years of the comic) does the opposite: first we have an action arc, dealing with the external threat of the warlord, then a thriller arc, as Tony comes home and lets his powers get to his head, and deals with the consequences at the end.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Just to review, the general arc of classical structure, as I identify it, can be boiled down to four quarters separated by three turning points:

First quarter: Longstanding problem becomes acute through a humiliation and a new opportunity to solve that problem is identified.

¼ point: Hero commits to the opportunity.

Second quarter: Hero tries to solve the problem the easy way.

Midpoint: Disaster and loss of safe space

Third quarter: Hero tries to solve the problem the hard way.

¾ point: Spiritual crisis

Final quarter: Wiser hero solves or succumbs to problem.

For now, let’s just focus on the four quarters. The essential quartet of Problem / Easy Way / Hard Way / Resolution is vague enough to apply to just about any story about a large problem, but eventually you get tired of having to squint all the time. When we opened our eyes all the way and tested this structure against some actual movies, we found that different genres tended to have very different takes on that quartet. This week, we’ll look at hour several different genres tend to define those four quarters.

Surprisingly, although there are many profoundly different subgenres of comedy, I was able to identify on more-specific quartet that applied to almost all of them:

The Hangover (transgressions not seen, revealed as part of lengthened consequences section)

Even the exceptions I identified were slight:

In Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant has no mask but it doesn’t matter because Hepburn insists on treating him as something he isn’t, so he gets the same benefit, in that he gets to flee his responsibilities for a time.

I was surprised that Bridesmaids, which feels like a very classical comedy, is the most atypical of the comedies I looked at, since our hero engages in almost no transgression, but merely attempts to be dutiful. She does wear a mask, however, to the extent that she pretends not to be broke and not to be horribly depressed about friend’s wedding and life in general.

Though, as we’ll see throughout the series, some movies end up jumping into other categories altogether:

Dr. Strangelove didn’t fit at all, but I think that that’s because it’s a conspiracy movie that’s played as a comedy and thus fits the “mystery” arc that we’ll look at tomorrow. (It was adapted from a dead serious novel)

Then I did a
week on the idea that “inciting incident” wasn’t a very useful concept, so it
should be replaced by three ideas: Problem-Opportunity-Conflict.

Now we’re
back to make more sense of it all.First of all, as you can see, I’ve changed the title.For the purposes of the upcoming book,
I’ve been expanding my definitions to apply to different storytelling media,
but I also want to make it clear that there’s lots of stories that these steps don’t apply to, such as long-form TV or
comic book serials, and also movies with atypical ambitions.

I don’t want
to imply that beloved movies like Weekend or Slacker
or Pulp Fiction are doing anything
wrong simply because they’re not
about the solving of a large problem.This structure doesn’t describe some sort of “inherent nature of
celluloid”, it merely describes the natural progress that most humans go
through when we try to solve a large problem, which is why, if you’re writing that kind of story, in
whatever media, you should probably hit most of these steps in roughly this order.

In this
series, we’re going to walk through the steps of the most common structure, but
that will actually start next
week.First we’re going to spend a
week expanding my previous thoughts about specific genre structures.Over the course of the Checklist Road Tests, it seemed that the concept of “the promise of the premise” was unclear,
partially because I borrowed it from Blake Snyder.

It emerged
that this could mean very different things depending on the genre.In some genres, such as comedy and
thrillers the audience and the hero are having fun together, but we also saw
that in horror movies such as Alien, the
audience is having fun because the heroes are suffering. So this
week we’ll tackle…

Thursday, May 16, 2013

To
paraphrase Rick’s description of Renault in Casablanca, filmmaking is
like any other job, only moreso.Did you choose this job because you don’t want to have a boss?Well I have bad news for you, you won’t
have one boss, you’ll have dozens, and many of them will be ten
times as arrogant, exploitative and contemptuous as the worst boss you’ve ever had.

Above all else, beware of this: Hollywood
producers, agents, stars, directors, etc., are some of the most thin-skinned
people in the world.On those
lucky occasions that one of them offers you an opportunity, it’s ridiculously
easy to blow it.They have a lot of unspoken rules, and
it’s not hard to break one, which will be the last you ever hear
from them. The sense of entitlement these people have is overwhelming.

Remember, these people are constantly pestered by job-hopefuls who have
memorized everything about them and are desperate
to be part of their world.On one
level they find these people really annoying and try to avoid them, but on the
other hand, they also come to take them for granted…they have unconsciously
concluded that there must be a good reason why all these people are obsessed
with them.

Inevitably,
they internalize the assumption that everybody
out there on the street knows everything about them, including their tastes and
preferences, their contact info, where they hang out, etc, which helps explain why power-people
are so bizarrely uncommunicative. It takes a Herculean effort to get them to
confirm the day, date, time, place and
address of a meet-up.If they
mention the name of a restaurant to meet, you’re just supposed to know where
that is, and if there’s more than one location, you’re supposed to be able to
guess which one they prefer.If
you don’t, you’ll have to badger their assistant to get that information, and
the assistant will be even more contemptuous.They know
everything about their boss, so why don’t you??

And by the
way, the super-hip places they want to meet invariably have nostreet signswhatsoever—restaurants without signs, private clubs without signs, even hotels without signs.They don’t even notice that these elite
places are designed to be completely invisible from the street and it would
never occur them that this might not be the best place to meet someone for the
first time.You’ve been there
before, right?Everybody goes there.

Most of all,
these people assume that everybody
will be agog when hearing their voice on the phone.They’ve gotten so used to hushed awe that anything else
seems downright contemptuous. The
last three people they spoke to were in awe of them, so who the hell are you to
act differently?

The trick is
to always be deferential, but never dazzled. Profoundly respect their power and their peculiarities, but don’t surrender
your self-respect. Yes, you should be
grateful these power-people are giving you some of their genuinely valuable time, but keep looking for the opportunity to quietly prove you’re good enough to be there. The trick is to prove your excellence in a way that doesn’t even remotely smell like insolence.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

In the
comments on this post, we debated about whether it ever makes sense to work on
projects you hate.Ultimately, I
would say that my answer is a sad yes, in some bad situations.

No, you
probably should knock yourself out trying to get hired for an opening writing assignment you hate, for several
reasons:

It’ll be hard to crack the story if
you don’t have a healthy respect for it.

You’ll be unlikely to get the job
because they’ll detect your lack of enthusiasm.

You don’t want to be miserable while
you’re writing it, because you’ll get bogged down over and over.

But you do
have to at least be able to write
projects you hate.Why?Because of this very unfortunate fact: in the
years between the sale and the finished movie, every script you sell will at
some point become a project you hate, even if only for a while.

Simon
Kinberg has seemingly spent his whole career living the dream.He sold his film school thesis
screenplay Mr. and Mrs. Smith to
Hollywood, then made millions rewriting other people’s projects while his own
script attracted every big name in town.(For a long time, it was supposed to star Will Smith and Nicole Kidman!)

Even more
impressive, by the time the finished movie came out, he was still the only
listed screenwriter, which is almost unheard of.Now, in point of fact, he had been fired several times, and
other writers had re-written it a dozen different ways, but each time the
studio changed their minds and reverted back to his latest version.

As hard as
that was to take, it was even worse when he didn’t
get fired, because each new director demanded he re-write his script to fit their vision, even when he wildly
disagreed with their take.

One of the
most acclaimed directors in town decided that the story should be a metaphor
for domestic violence, and the spies should keep sending each other to the
emergency room where they could make mirthless jokes about how the other ran
into a doorknob.It turned
Kinberg’s stomach to write these scenes, but he did it anyway, because, by this
point, he knew that this director would inevitably pass and he would soon be
working for someone else, and he just wanted to stay attached until that
happened. In the end, he was glad
he did.

This is a
job.Like any other job, you do
better work when you believe in what you do, but you can’t demand the right to
be gung ho about every assignment every day.Sometimes, you just have to keep your head down, do it their
way, and trust that, somehow, everything will work out alright.

(...But whatever you do, don’t say, “Okay then, I’ll write it in a way that shows them how bad their idea is.” Inevitably, one of two things will happen:

They’ll instantly detect that you tanked it, then fire and bad-mouth you.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

We finally got around to watching Whale Rider the other day, which was great, and one thought I had
while watching it was how much the New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro and novelist
Witi Ihimaera owned the material.They were telling their land’s story, one that no outsider had.The emotions were universal, but, to a
non-Maori audience, all of the details were wonderfully exotic and unique.There is real power in that
authenticity.

I made a fundamental mistake when pitching my Alan Turing script around town.They would all
ask me how I found this story and I gave the wrong answer: “I randomly ran
across it in a book, liked it, read a bunch more books, and decided to write
it.”They would look a little
uncomfortable and ask me what my connection to the material was, and I would
blithely blabber, “Funny you should ask: absolutely none!He’s a gay British mathematician, and
I’m not any of those things!”I
didn’t realize that I was killing my sale.

Instead, when you’re pitching, you need to play up yourauthenticity, establish your connection to the material.Even if you don’t “own” any
source material involved, you have to own
it.Be necessary.Prove that
you’re the one writer who is perfect
for this material.Assure them
that, if they had been the one to
have this idea, and they could have hired any writer in the world to write it,
you’re the writer they would have hired.

After all, as soon as they buy it from you, it is their idea, in every sense of the
word, and you’re their employee.You don’t want them to suddenly wonder, “Why did I hire this guy?”

But be aware that there’s a tipping point at which your
connection to the material stops being an asset and starts being a
liability.It’s one thing to say,
“I’m the perfect guy to write this, because I’m a gay British mathematician
myself” (in fact, Turing’s most in-depth biographer was all three), but the
fear is that you’ll then say, “And I’m gonna tell the real story, instead of all that phony Hollywood crap!”Suddenly, all of the enthusiasm will
drain out of producers’ faces.

You have to own it without letting it own you.You have to have a deep reservoir of
unique real-world knowledge, but then you have use it or discard it as
necessary in the service of a great story.

Look at “The Americans”: creator Joe Weisberg sold that
show based on his own experience as a CIA officer, and indeed the show offers
many real-world aspects of spy work that you rarely see onscreen, such as the
recruiting and handling of long-term assets, but it also exaggerates and
re-writes the facts at will. The details
are authentic, but the story is pure
fiction.

In this excellent AV Club interview, Weisberg makes it
clear that the spy stuff was always restricted to being a metaphor
for the family stuff, and never the other way around.He uses all of his spy knowledge, but
he doesn’t let it take over the show. In the end, he’s not even
writing about spies, he’s just using his authentic tradecraft
knowledge as a source of unique details to enrich a universal story of family
strife.

Monday, May 13, 2013

I didn’t
need to see the remake of Total Recall
to know it was bad.All I had to
do was look at the cast.Colin
Farrell and Jessica Biel were on nobody’s A-List in 2012.The producers probably wanted Brad and Angelina, until they read the script and passed on it.

At least
Farrell has talent, despite being box-office poison, but Biel has now made
dozens of movies without ever having a single hit, or a single good review of her performances in those movies, as far
as I know.She’s a place-holder,
not an asset. Her presence tells you that every bankable and/or talented
actress in town turned down the part. There’s probably a good reason for that.

It’s
tempting to say, “They ruined my script with bad actors!”But actually, you ruined your movie with bad actors.You wrote a script that was good enough to attract a
producer and director, but not good enough to attract excellent onscreen
talent.If Jessica Biel is in your
movie, then you wrote it wrong.

When you
revise, you need to ask yourself: Do each of the top five parts have satisfying and original character arcs?Of course, for the fifth-billed character, it might be a
very lightly-sketched arc, but a little goes a long way. Likewise for every scene:Is that going to be a
fully-engaged day on set for each actor?Or are they going to be rolling their eyes and sleep-walking
through it?Is this something
they’ve already done before in other movies, or is it something that nobody has done before in any movie.

For as many
parts as possible, write dialogue they’ll be excited to say, scenes that
activate their imaginations, and parts they’ve always wanted to play.You’ll have your pick of the best talent in
town.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

As I’ve been running movies through the checklist, and your
helpful suggestions, certain questions seem to me to be less than useful. I’ve stated before that one of my goals is to never ask a
question that always gets a “yes” (This is one reason I don’t like the
terminology “inciting incident”, because it’s impossible to write a story that
doesn’t have one, in one form or another.)Writers seek out these lists because they need something proscriptive, not merely descriptive.Every rule needs to be breakable.

One question that hasn’t seemed very useful on the
checklist so far is under “How to Build a Scene”: “Do
they confront each other through sub-text moreso than through text?”I generally answer “yes”, but the
question is too vague to demand more explanation. Instead, let’s switch to this: “Do
you have a surface conflict and an suppressed conflict?”This forces the writer to identify
both, which will help identify which one might be missing.

Now let’s look back at the eight scenes we’ve examined so
far and identify the surface conflict / suppressed conflict.

Bridesmaids: Over whether or not she’ll
get a ticket / Over whether they should date, why she’s a failure.

Silence of the Lambs: Over filling out
the questionnaire / Over her desire to catch Buffalo Bill, over his desire to dissect
her and to escape.

Donnie Brasco: Over who tipped off Sonny
Black / Over their friendship, over Donnie’s splintering loyalties.

How to Train Your Dragon: Over how the
students should kill this new type of dragon / Over crushes, over how to
befriend the Night Fury.

Alien: Over whether or not to kill the
Alien / Over Ash’s true motives.

The Shining: Over the stain, over whether
or not he’s seen the butler before / Over the nature of the house, over whether
or not he should kill his family

Casablanca: Over whether Rick will take
custody of the letters / Over who killed the couriers, who Rick really is, whether Ugarte is worthy
of respect

In a Lonely Place: Over lots of little
things / Over whether or not Laurel will leave, whether or not any of them can
trust Dix anymore.

So, in each case, the answer is “yes”, but I think we’ve
uncovered a lot more useful information, and a more useful thing to consider
in advance when crafting a scene from scratch.

In each of these cases, it would have been so much easier
for the writer to simply have the characters walk right up to each other and
confront each other about what’s really bothering them.Such scenes are tempting, because they’re big, bold, packed with
attitude and full of conflict.But
they ring false, and lack multiple layers, so they’re flat.

People avoid conflict, and use tricks and traps to get what
they want.It’s usually in the
best interest of both parties to keep the suppressed conflict suppressed, and stay
focused on the surface conflict.It spares both parties pain, allows each to keep his or her own goals
hidden, and gives each an excuse to ignore the other’s ploy to force them to do
something they don’t want to do.

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Deviation #1: The hero’s goals aren’t clear and he’s not the person working the hardest to solve the problem.

The Potential Problem: Like Casablanca, Bogart once again plays his cards close to the chest, coyly prevaricating about what his character’s goals are. Does he want this adaptation job or not? Does he just want quick cash or is he determined to make art? Does he want to clear his name or does he actually want to implicate himself (out of a perverse impulse for self-destruction)? We never know for sure. And of course we aren’t sure until the end whether or not he killed one of our characters!

Does the Movie Get Away With It? Yes. Like The Shining (also about a potentially-homicidal author), this movie pulls off a tricky relay-race. Dix is only occasionally interested in solving his own problem, and when he loses interest, Laurel and his detective friend Frank take up the slack, trying to solve his problems for him (Laurel tries to get Dix to face his anger issues, Frank tries to clear Dix’s name). Writer Andrew Solt and director Nicholas Ray deftly bounce our identification back and forth between Dix and Laurel, symbolizing her vacillating loyalty and his faltering sense of self-preservation.

But wait, here’s another problem:

Deviation #2: The movie doesn’t show us any images we haven’t seen before and doesn’t satisfy the urges that get people to buy and recommend this kind of movie.

The Potential Problem: This movie has never been as well-known as it ought to be. This might be because, like Donnie Brasco, it has no unique imagery with which to promote it. Just look at their DVD covers--Would you rent either of these movies if you knew nothing about them?

And even when people see this, they don’t know quite how to describe it. It’s almost perversely frustrating to noir fans: we don’t see the crime, don’t see the arrest, don’t hear the confession, don’t get a physical showdown between Dix and Laurel… It’s sort of an anti-noir.

Does the Movie Get Away With It? Yes and no. It’s hard to blame the movie for its failure to satisfy the urges or noir or thriller fans, since that denial supports the theme: this is a feminist movie (albeit not as much as Dorothy Hughes’s excellent but very different novel, in which Dix turns out to be very, very guilty) It indicts the viewers for our desire to see independent desirable women disempowered and chopped up. The movie intentionally frustrates us by denying those urges in order to make us confront and question those urges. The downside is that the movie is hard to market, and it’s never achieved the household-name status it deserves, alongside The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca as one of Bogart’s greatest movies.

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Hotheaded screenwriter Dix Steele hires a hat-check girl to read a book for him, then sends her home just before she gets killed. His only alibi is his neighbor Laurel Grey, who saw him around that time but isn’t sure about the timeline. Dix begins a romance with Laurel, but she begins to have her doubts about his innocence.

PART
#1: CONCEPT 16/19

The Pitch: Does this concept excite everyone who
hears about it?

Is the
one sentence description uniquely appealing?

An angry screenwriter is accused of murder, then falls in
love with the beautiful woman who provided his alibi, but she’s not sure he’s
really innocent.

Does
the concept contain an intriguing ironic contradiction?

Yes, a writer of
crime stories is caught up in one.

Is this a story anyone can identify with, projected onto
a bigger canvas, with higher stakes?

Yes.

Story Fundamentals: Will this concept generate a
strong story?

Is the
concept simple enough to spend more time on character than plot?

Yes, the plot all happens offscreen,
all we see are the emotional reactions to it.

Is
there one character that the audience will choose to be their “hero”?

Yes, Dix.

Does
the story follow the progress of the hero’s problem, not the hero’s daily
life?

Yes. We zip
through a lot of time.

Does
the story present a unique relationship?

Yes, a romance
between a man and the stranger that alibis him.

Is at
least one actual human being opposed to what the hero is doing?

Yes, everyone, to
varying degrees.

Does
this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear and/or
an ironic answer to the hero’s question?

Yes, greatest
hope: return of love and career passion, greatest fear: his anger goes out of
control, ironic answer: he asks “what happens in the book?” then he lives it.

Does
something inside the hero have a particularly volatile reaction to the
challenge?

Yes, very.

Does
this challenge become something that is the not just hard for the hero to do (an obstacle) but hard for the hero
to want to do (a conflict)?

Yes, he thinks he
needs his anger to survive and to write well.

In the
end, is the hero the only one who can solve the problem?

No. His friends care more about
helping him, both externally and internally, than he does himself.This should kill the movie but it
doesn’t.This is very rare: a
compelling story about refusing to help yourself.

Does
the hero permanently transform the situation and vice versa?

Transform the
situation: he pushes Laurel too far and out of his life.Transform the hero: “I lived a while
while she loved me, I died when she left me.”

The
Hook: Will this be marketable and generate word of mouth?

Does
the story satisfy the basic human urges that get people to buy and recommend
this genre?

No.No crimes are committed onscreen, there is no climactic
act of violence, the crime is also solved offscreen, and the perpetrator is
someone we don’t know.

Does
this story show us at least one image we haven’t seen before (that can be
used to promote the final product)?

No.That’s a problem.It has no noir imagery.

Is
there at least one “Holy Crap!” scene (to create word of mouth)?

Not really, but the level of darkness
Bogart taps into must have been shocking at the time.

Does
the story contain a surprise that is not obvious from the beginning?

Sort of: by that
point we’re half convinced that he did it, but he didn’t.

Is the
story marketable without revealing the surprise?

Yes.

Is the
conflict compelling and ironic both before and after the surprise?

Yes.

PART
#2: CHARACTER 19/22

Believe:
Do we recognize the hero as a human being?

Does
the hero have a moment of humanity early on? (A funny, or kind, or oddball,
or out-of-character, or comically vain, or unique-but-universal “I thought I
was the only one who did that!” moment?)

Yes, he’s funny
with the kids, kind to the drunk.

Is the
hero defined by ongoing actions and attitudes, not by backstory?

Yes.He is problems are defined by almost
getting in that fight, not by what we then find out about his stalled out
career.

Does
the hero have a well-defined public identity?

Yes, talented
misanthrope.

Does
the surface characterization ironically contrast with a hidden interior self?

Somewhat, he’s a
better person than he seems to be, since he stands up for the drunk and
secretly sends flowers to dead girl.

Does
the hero have a consistent metaphor family (drawn from his or her job,
background, or developmental state)?

Yes, mock-film
noir, based on his screenwriting career.

Does
the hero have a default personality trait?

Yes, sarcasm

Does
the hero have a default argument tactic?

Yes, encourages
them to talk, lets them hang themselves, then shoots them down swiftly and
brutally.Or he just punches
them.

Is the
hero’s primary motivation for tackling this challenge strong, simple, and
revealed early on?

No, it’s complex and contradictory:
Does he want the Althea Bruce job or not?Does he want to write something for quick money or
something meaningful?Is he
looking for love?For sex?Does he have a death wish? A desire
to be imprisoned?Does he want
to deal with his anger issues or not?Unlike most heroes, he is a man or dark, murky, contradictory
impulses.And yet, we love him
and find him utterly compelling.He’s an exception to the rule.

Care:
Do we feel for the hero?

Does
the hero start out with a shortsighted or wrongheaded philosophy (or accept a
false piece of advice early on)?

Yes: “She’s right,
I am nobody.”

Does
the hero have a false or shortsighted goal in the first half?

Yes, write a
quickie picture for some money.

Does
the hero have an open fear or anxiety about his or her future, as well as a
hidden, private fear?

Open: that he’s
wasted his life.Hidden: that
he’ll kill somebody.

Is the
hero physically and emotionally vulnerable?

Yes, very much
so.Bogart was great at acting
tough and then totally wilting.

Does
the hero have at least one untenable great flaw we empathize with? (but…)

Yes, his hostility
cannot be controlled.

Invest:
Can we trust the hero to tackle this challenge?

…Is that great flaw (ironically) the natural
flip-side of a great strength we admire?

Yes, he’s brutally
honest and a great writer.

Is the
hero curious?

No.He refuses to pay attention to key facts he needs to
hear.

Is the
hero generally resourceful?

No.Others have to take care of him.

Does
the hero have rules he or she lives by (either stated or implied)?

Yes: One day I’ll write
something great, I won’t be insulted, I must never show my real emotions.

Is the
hero surrounded by people who sorely lack his or her most valuable quality?

Yes, only he is
kind to the drunk, only he speaks his mind.

…And
is the hero willing to let them know that, subtly or directly?

Very much so, he has a
razor-sharp rapier wit

Is the
hero already doing something active when we first meet him or her?

Yes, he’s on his way to
meeting about a job.

Does
the hero have (or claim) decision-making authority?

Yes, he’s his own
boss.

Does
the hero use pre-established special skills from his or her past to solve
problems (rather than doing what anybody would do)?

Yes. “It was his
story against mine…Of course, I told my story better.”“I’ve had a lot of experience in
matters of this kind, I’ve killed a lot of people…in pictures.”

PART
#3: STRUCTURE (If the story is about the solving of a large problem) 17/21

1st
Quarter: Is the challenge laid out in the first quarter?

When
the story begins, is the hero becoming increasingly irritated about his or
her longstanding social problem (while still in denial about an internal
flaw)?

No, in this story, he is already aware
of his internal flaw, which is the same as his longstanding personal problem:
his bad anger management.

Does
this problem become undeniable due to a social humiliation at the beginning
of the story?

Yes, he almost
gets in a fight in the street, then his few friends chew him out for almost
getting in another fight at his favorite restaurant.

Does
the hero discover an intimidating opportunity to fix the problem?

In a roundabout
way: a girl’s death brings his old cop friend and a new girlfriend into his
life, both of whom will offer him compassion while challenging him on his
anger issues.

Does
the hero hesitate until the stakes are raised?

Yes, he hesitates
about pursuing Laurel.

Does the hero commit to pursuing the opportunity by the
end of the first quarter?

Indirectly: He
commits to pursuing the girl, and she commits to solving his problems for
him.

2nd
Quarter: Does the hero try the easy way in the second quarter?

Does
the hero’s pursuit of the opportunity quickly lead to an unforeseen conflict
with another person?

Yes, Laurel’s
masseuse is opposed to the relationship, his cop buddy’s boss and wife both
distrust Dix.

Does
the hero try the easy way throughout the second quarter?

Yes, he blows off
the murder accusation and his early relationship is idyllic.

Does
the hero have a little fun and get excited about the possibility of success?

Yes, he thinks
he’s solved all of his personal problems and cleared his name.

Does the
easy way lead to a big crash around the midpoint, resulting in the loss of a
safe space and/or sheltering relationship?

Yes, at the beach
picnic, Dix realizes that his girl and his friend are conspiring against
him.As a result, he almost
murders another driver. Neither relationship is ever the same.

3rd
Quarter: Does the hero try the hard way in the third quarter?

Does
the hero try the hard way from this point on?

No.He remains in denial until almost the end.

Does
the hero find out who his or her real friends and real enemies are?

Yes, finds out cop
has stood by him, but Laurel is unwilling to.

Do the
stakes, pace, and motivation all escalate at this point?

Yes. His marriage
proposal creates a crisis.

Does
the hero learn from mistakes in a painful way?

Yes, but not until
it’s too late.

Does a
further setback lead to a spiritual crisis?

Yes, but only at
the very end when he realizes that his fiancé is leaving him.

4th
Quarter: Does the challenge climax in the fourth quarter?

Does
the hero adopt a corrected philosophy after the spiritual crisis?

Yes: “I lived a
few weeks while she loved me.”

After
that crisis, does the hero finally commit to pursuing a corrected goal, which
still seems far away?

No.The movie is over.He is destroyed.

Before
the final quarter of the story begins, (if not long before) has your hero
switched to being proactive, instead of reactive?

Yes, he proposes
marriage, forcing her hand.

Despite
these proactive steps, is the timeline unexpectedly moved up, forcing the
hero to improvise for the finale?

Yes, he discovers
that she is leaving him.

Do all
strands of the story and most of the characters come together for the
climactic confrontation?

Almost, if they had all come together
at the engagement dinner, things might have worked out, but the last piece of
the puzzle doesn’t arrive until they’re alone, when things are too late.

Does
the hero’s inner struggle climax shortly after (or possible at the same time
as) his or her outer struggle?

Yes, after he is
cleared, the real internal crisis comes.

Is
there an epilogue/ aftermath/ denouement in which the challenge is finally
resolved (or succumbed to), and we see how much the hero has changed
(possibly through reversible behavior)

Yes, he watches
her walk away and declares himself dead inside.

PART
#4: SCENEWORK 20/20 (Laurel has made secret plans to leave town, but Dix
makes her go to his favorite restaurant to celebrate their engagement with
his agent, his alcoholic friend, and others)

The
Set-Up: Does this scene begin with the essential elements it needs?

Were
tense and/or hopeful (and usually false) expectations for this interaction
established beforehand?

Yes, we know that
she’s planned her escape, and that he has no idea.

Does
the scene eliminate small talk and repeated beats by cutting out the
beginning (or possibly even the middle)?

Yes, we begin when
the last person arrives.

Is
this an intimidating setting that keeps characters active?

Yes, his ex walks
in, he’s been warned there about his behavior before, etc.

Is one
of the scene partners not planning to have this conversation (and quite
possibly has something better to do)?

Laurel has
something better to do but is forced to stay.

Is
there at least one non-plot element complicating the scene?

Yes, the drunk
friend just adds a note of pathos and humor.

Does
the scene establish its own mini-ticking-clock (if only through subconscious
anticipation)?

Yes, we know that
there’s a danger that various people might call. We know that Laurel has
tickets out of town.

The
Conflict: Do the conflicts play out in a lively manner?

Does this scene both advance the plot and reveal
character through emotional reactions?

Very much so.Dix finally loses it, punches out his
agent, etc.

Does
the audience have (or develop) a rooting interest in this scene (which may
sometimes shift)?

We’re split, we
can’t decide if we want her to get away or want him to win her back

Are
two agendas genuinely clashing (rather than merely two personalities)?

Yes, she wants to
leave him and he wants to get married.

Does
the scene have both a surface conflict and a suppressed conflict (one of
which is the primary conflict in this scene)?

Is
there re-blocking, including literal push and pull between the scene partners
(often resulting in just one touch)?

Just a
little.Mostly, they’re at the
table, until Dix punches his agent.

Are
objects given or taken, representing larger values?

Yes, the ominous
phone is handed around.

The
Outcome: Does this scene change the story going forward?

As a
result of this scene, does at least one of the scene partners end up doing
something that he or she didn’t intend to do when the scene began?

Yes, Dix nails
them all, one by one, getting them all to admit things they don’t want to.

Does
the outcome of the scene ironically reverse (and/or ironically fulfill) the
original intention?

Yes, the
celebration ruins everything.

Are
previously-asked questions answered and new questions posed?

Previous: will the
agent like the script?Will the
studio?Will Laurel get away?
New: why are the police calling?Where has Laurel gone?

Does
the scene cut out early, on a question (possibly to be answered instantly by
the circumstances of the next scene)?

Yes, where is he
going?

Is the
audience left with a growing hope and/or fear for what might happen next?
(Not just in the next scene, but generally)

Very much so.We’re now terrified about what might
happen in the next scene.

PART
#5: DIALOGUE 14/16

Empathetic:
Is the dialogue true to human nature?

Does
the writing demonstrate empathy for all of the characters?

Very much so.The novel was written by a woman from
Laurel’s point of view and the screenplay is written by a man from Dix’s
point of view, but it retains a tremendous amount of empathy towards Laurel,
and everyone else.

Does
each of the characters, including the hero, have a limited perspective?

Very much so.

Do the
characters consciously and unconsciously prioritize their own wants, rather
than the wants of others?

For the most part.Laurel decides to save Dix, but in a
believable way: she never sacrifices her own wants and needs to his.

Are
the characters resistant to openly admitting their feelings (to others and
even to themselves)?

Very much so.

Do the
characters avoid saying things they wouldn’t say and doing things they
wouldn’t do?

Yes.

Do the
characters interrupt each other often?

Dix more than
Laurel, but yes.

Specific: Is the dialogue specific to this world
and each personality?

Does
the dialogue capture the jargon and tradecraft of the profession and/or
setting?

Yes, in many ways.
For example: Dix’s monologue about how the breakfast scene is the ideal love
scene, not suspecting that she no longer loves him, shows how the false
omniscience of the screenwriter has blinded him to reality.

Are
there additional characters with distinct metaphor families, default
personality traits, and default argument strategies from the hero’s?

Is the
story limited to sub-genres that are compatible with each other, without
mixing metaphors?

Yes, the Hollywood
movie.

Does
the ending satisfy most of the expectations of the genre, and defy a few
others?

No, it doesn’t satisfy any of them,
but that’s the point: this is a feminist film (albeit much less so than the
book) that wants us to be aware of and worried about our urges to see violent
pay-offs.It works brilliantly.

Separate
from the genre, is a consistent mood (goofy, grim, ‘fairy tale’, etc.)
established early and maintained throughout?

Yes, witty
cynicism with a strong undercurrent of despair and violence. Established by
the contrast of the almost-fight in the street followed by his gentle witty
interaction with the kids, where he accepts their conclusion that he’s a
nobody.

Framing:
Does the story set, reset, upset and ultimately exceed its own expectations?

Is
there a dramatic question posed early on, which will establish in the
audience’s mind which moment will mark the end of the story?

Yes, did Dix kill
her?

Does the story use framing devices to establish
genre, mood and expectations?

No, and the movie suffers for it.We’re never quite sure of what type
of movie it is, and where it’s going.

Are
there characters whose situations prefigure various fates that might await
the hero?

Yes, Laurel is
afraid she’ll be killed like the girl, Dix is afraid he’ll end up like the
old drunk.

Yes, the script uses
metacommentary, the script Dix is working on keeps predicting what will
happen next in his life in ironic ways. Solt keeps our focus off the
investigation and on the relationship.

Are
reversible behaviors used to foreshadow and then confirm change?

Yes, can’t write
and then he can, can’t answer the phone, then he can.

Is the
dramatic question answered at the very end of the story?

Yes, we find out
that Dix didn’t kill her.

PART
7: THEME 12/14

Difficult:
Is the meaning of the story derived from a fundamental moral dilemma?

Can
the overall theme be stated in the form of an irreconcilable good vs. good
(or evil vs. evil) dilemma?

Sacrificing for
love vs. self protection.

Is a
thematic question asked out loud (or clearly implied) in the first half, and
left open?

Yes: “Why does he
have to be like this?”“Would
you want him any other way?”

Do the
characters consistently have to choose between goods, or between evils,
instead of choosing between good and evil?

Somewhat.There aren’t a lot of tough dilemmas for Dix, just for
those who have to decide whether or not to trust him.

Grounded:
Do the stakes ring true to the world of the audience?

Does
the story reflect the way the world works?

Yes. This is a
much scarier vision of humorous misanthropy than the charming version Bill
Murray tends to play.

Does
the story have something authentic to say about this type of setting (Is it
based more on observations of this type of setting than ideas about it)?

Yes, this is
clearly a painfully real portrait of Solt’s own world.

Does
the story include twinges of real life national pain?

Yes, postwar
domestic violence and depression loom large: “Dix hasn’t been this good since
before the war.”

Are
these issues and the overall dilemma addressed in a way that avoids moral
hypocrisy?

Yes.

Do all
of the actions have real consequences?

Yes.

Subtle: Is the theme interwoven throughout so
that it need not be discussed often?

Do
many small details throughout subtly and/or ironically tie into the thematic
dilemma?

Yes, the details
of the book, etc.

Are
one or more objects representing larger ideas exchanged throughout the story,
growing in meaning each time?

No, not really. The book,
maybe. Briefly with the grapefruit knife, and the phone.

Untidy:
Is the dilemma ultimate irresolvable?

Does
the ending tip towards one side of the thematic dilemma without resolving it
entirely?

Yes, self
protection is better than sacrificing for love, but it’s a painful choice.

Does
the story’s outcome ironically contrast with the initial goal?

Yes, he clears his
name but loses the girl anyway.

In the
end, is the plot not entirely tidy (some small plot threads left unresolved,
some answers left vague)?

Yes, we never find
out how and why the murder happened.

Do the
characters refuse (or fail) to synthesize the meaning of the story, forcing
the audience to do that?

He synthesizes it
in a pat way, but because we saw him coin that phrase before, we suspect that
he is only pretending to feel the impact, or that he’s summoned up so many
canned feelings for Hollywood that he can’t summon up any raw, authentic
feelings anymore.